Hey all! I'm back from OBS! ;D Shall post up the 2 photographs of my watch when I get to switching the computer on and scanning them in. (: For now, please bear with my lengthy descriptions. ._.
Monday -
Day 1I cabbed to school early in the morning. 3 cabs (which were empty) didn't want to pick me up for some reason. ): I was still MUCH earlier than Wendy (who was 15 minutes late) though. Considering how we were supposed to gather by 07 15, 15 minutes from 07 00 is definitely makes a difference.
We reached school, took the bus to Punggol Jetty and then the ferry to Pulau Ubin. Since we were the last ferry to arrive, they'd already started calling out names and splitting people into their watches. I was grouped into
NILA UTAMA with
BIBIANA as our instructor.
Nila Utama consists of (in no particular order) Arthi, Shujun, Samantha, Meng Yuan, Yao Yi, Zihao, Jie Rui, Huijuan, Trudy, Hung, Huy, Minlu, Wenlin, Lavania and Amanda (from 06). It's not a bad watch. (: I think we managed to bond really fast. Anyway, we surrendered our cellphones and wallets, which was probably for safekeeping and to make sure we weren't distracted during the camp. I must say it worked really well.
After introductions and lunch, which consisted of buns, oreos and a fruity bix bar, we rearranged and cleaned up the Nila Utama storeroom. Oh yes, before that, we also signed a book that ensures that we will do our best during the camp and follow certain "rules". Since every Nila Utamian has signed that book, I looked through it and searched for people I knew. Turns out Huiyan and Zoe (from Nanyang) were both from Nila Utama! ;D
Lets see if I can remember everything. We had 32 bottles, stoppers and caps to wash. 5 jerry cans to wash. 16 helmets and harnesses to pair up. 5 tents, 5 fly sheets, 16x5 tent pegs, 6x5 tent sticks to pack into 1 tent bag each. 5 ground sheets to take out. 10 sets of mess tins to wash. 1 shovel and 1 funnel to wash. 16 lifejackets and 16 whistles to pair up. 4 compasses and 2 maps. 16 backpacks. 16 ponchos to fold. 5 jack knives. Yes, that should be about it. (:
When the packing was done, we went for our first real activity! LEARNING HOW TO KAYAK! Bibiana taught us how to go forwards, backwards, leftwards, rightwards and sidewards. (: Then we all moved our kayaks to the seashore, put on our lifevests and had a dip in the sea. Afterwards, Arthi and I paired up and we did a capsize simulation, which means that Bibiana purposely made us all capsize to see what it's like and to learn the correct procedures. Hoho. (x The stupid kayak was SO STABLE that you really had to rock it and lean fully towards one side before you can capsize. xD Afterwards, we moved outwards into the deeper parts of the sea and did a capsize AND rescue simulation. Arthi and I paired up with Samantha and Shujun. They capsized first and we had to kayak TWO ROUNDS around them before we managed to get our kayak's body to be at a right angle to their kayak's head. :D We rescued them and their kayaks, which includes emptying the water in the latter and getting the former back up. IT TOOK AGES! Then WE capsized and THEY rescued us. All 4 of us re-entered our kayaks in the most unglamourous methods possible. xD
Since kayaking caused us all to get wet and sticky, we took beautiful 15 minute showers. ;D Then we met Bibiana and she taught us how to pitch our own tents. This involves the ground sheet is obviously ON THE GROUND. The tent will be placed on the ground sheet and pegs used to hold them together to the ground. The tent will then be propped up with the metal sticks and with cotton twine and MORE pegs, enlarged. The fly sheet then goes above the tent and is held to the ground in the same way. We were quite slow with our first tent, except for Shujun, who was a Girl Guide previously.
We had creamy rice for dinner, with tiny sausages, baked beans and mushrooms I think. (: It wasn't too bad. The worst thing was probably cleaning up after that. Lots of rice from our own group and Tenzing left some too. After wash up was sleep. ;D Arthi, Sam, Shujun and I shared the same tent. We had to sleep following the breadth of the ten rather then the length because there was NOT ENOUGH SPACE! )x I guess it took awhile to sleep since it was the first night, but otherwise I think I managed to have about 5 hours of it. (:
Tuesday -
Day 2Woke up, washed up, unpitched tents and had breakfast. ;D I think unpitching tents is worse than pitching them. The ground sheet is all dirty and wet on one side due to the morning dew and the fly sheet was wet as well. Plus the fact that the tent pegs were dirty with soil as well. )x
Our next activity was the TRUST FALL. We first practised by falling forwards and allowing others to push us backwards and vice versa. It is much like what we did in Nanyang during Mr. Tang's lesson last year. (: People didn't trust as much though. I think Trudy and Amanda were one of the best. Then we moved on to the real thing. Standing on a platform, we had to fall backwards with our hands crossed onto a tarp which was held tightly by all our watch members. :D
Person on platform:
Nila ready?Watch:
Nila ready! Nila pull!Everyone completed the activity successfully enough. (: Bibiana then taught us how to put on our harnesses and left us there to get ready for our next activity. LEARNING HOW TO BELAY. This is what the person at the bottom does when rock climbing. There are basically 4 people involved in the whole process. The climber, the belayer, the anchor and the person who holds the rope for the belayer.
I worked with my tent-mates for this activity.
Climber: Am I on belay?
Belayer: No, you're not (pulls rope till it's taut).
Climber: (when s/he feels rope is taut) That's me!
Belayer: Squeeze check! Pull check! Instructor check!
Climber: Climbing!
Belayer: Climb on!
After this one, we left to pack our horribly heavy backpacks, then had lunch. In case you wanted to know, lunch and breakfast usually consist of buns, oreo cookies, chocolate biscuits, fruity bix bars, cream biscuits, butter biscuits, wheat biscuits, pandan "cake". Hoho. Almost EVERYTHING is SWEET. Ack! I think we definitely got all the glucose we needed. :D
When we were done with packing, we left for the real rock climbing activity itself. (: We shared the rock wall with Livingstone. Arthi is a bad anchoooor! While belaying Shujun, she didn't anchor (hold on to my harness and pull me down) me properly. Shujun FELL and I FLEW FORWARD with LEGS OFF THE GROUND. Thank God she noticed in time. xD
We were then given time to have a shower. Shujun and I only washed our limbs and hair. After that, we left (with our heavy-heavy bags) for our next campsite. It was only a 15 minute walk, but it's a 15 minute walk with our amazingly heavy bags! Even 5 minutes with those bags is bad enough. )x Anyway, campsite 2 was a HORRIBLE campsite. The floor was covered in random, large and small pieces of rocks and bricks all over the place and it was virtually impossible to find a flat spot. We set our stuff down and pitched our tents all over again. This time the job was made harder because we had to use large rocks to hit the tent pegs into the ground. ): Livingstone was also camping with us. (:
So we had dinner, of Maggie Mee this time. The mess tins were sooty by the time we were done. Arthi and I got so hungry looking at Shujun eat that we decided to share our food when it came. (: Mmph. We met Bibiana after dinner and ended up sitting in a circle and chatting with her for more than an hour. :D I think everyone should have enjoyed that night.
Um... then we went to sleep on the horrible ground. Sam, who was having slight breathing problems didn't sleep for the whole night. Arthi ended up putting her leg on me in the middle of the night because the place was too small. All 4 of us woke up with back aches, if you actually count Sam, who didn't manage to sleep. ._. Well anyway, you can actually see the beautiful stars at night. :D The whole nightsky was filled with them. They're pretty tiny as compared to those which you can see from hills/mountains in other countries, but they're still stars! (:
Wednesday -
Day 3Man, this post is getting extremely long. (x We woke up in the morning, unpitched the tents again, went to brush teeth, went to pee in the bushes and had a random breakfast of really sweet snacks. It's not the healthiest breakfast that you can find, but it gives you the energy. Arthi and I each kept a Fruity Bix Bar for later since we couldn't actually finish everything during breakfast.
We played ALPINE CHALLENGE after that! It's this structure which has about 4-5 platforms and we had to move from one to another using the above-ground logs. All 16 of us, plus a stretcher with 4 sleeping bags on it. If anyone lost their balance and touched the ground, then we had to go back to the previous platform. Zihao and Jierui helped us a lot in this area. They were the 2 people who were mostly in charge of moving the stretcher from one platform to another. By the time we were at the 2nd last platform, you could clearly see sweat dripping down both their faces, as if they'd just showered with their clothes on. It was really nice to see everyone working together and helping each other stabilize while having others throw out suggestions. :D We managed to complete everything within 1 hr 15 min. Bibiana didn't stop us even though we were over the time limit of 1 hour because we were almost at our destination. xD
After that activity, we were briefed on the route to our next camp site. I don't think I will ever consider trekking again. Kayaking/canoeing maybe, but definitely not trekking. It kills the back and all the muscles that go along with it. I get the feeling that my mild scoliosis would have increased by a few degrees. xD On our way there, Bibiana fed a spider with a large red ant at one of our rest stops. It's interesting to watch the spider do it's wrapping-thing. (; Zihao and Jierui were in charge of this trek. They were the navigators and thank God they brought us down the correct route. I would have been very reluctant to back-track.
Our next destination was the HDB quarry. ;D It's called that because the stones dug up from that place were used to make HDB flats in the olden days. When it became unused, rainwater started filling it up and now it's a quarry. (c: The place outside the quarry has an abundance of mosquitoes. You can actually see them flying around the place very clearly. Once I dropped my bag onto the ground, approximately 3 mosquitoes started flying around it. ._. Being the majority, they were hardly afraid of us. )x When Hung didn't smear mosquito repellent on himself like the rest of us, I actually saw 2 mosquitoes ATTACHING themselves to his legs. And when he tried to shake them off, the mosquitoes stayed there, acting as if nothing had just happened. Yes, the sight of that is slightly scary, and not to mention traumatizing.
The next activity we did was BUILDING A RAFT. We did all of this with 8 pipes, 4 barrels and 16 pieces of rope. Bibiana taught us how to tie the pipes together with some complicated knot that only Shujun could correctly at first, thanks to her Guides' training. So anyway, after everything was completed, we had a presentation. They did the lift test, shake test and kick test before allowing us to bring it through the gates to the quarry. We dropped our raft into the water, jumped into the quarry and spent quite an amount of time trying to get onto it. Then we paddled a few metres and back when Bibiana was satisfied that our raft actually worked. (: We brought the raft back up, dismantled it, placed all the items neatly outside the gates and went back for half an hour of fun! ;D We jumped in AGAIN and Arthi did it more than once. A group of them dunked Bibiana and spat water out at her (all good-naturedly of course), then they changed their target to Lavania instead. xD We all let down our hair and cleansed ourselves in the water as that was the only "bath" we were going to get for that day. Pffft. The water's really fresh and all. Bibiana kept emphasizing on the fact that we were never going to be with this group of people in the same place again. Especially since the quarry is OBS property. Sam didn't manage to join us as she was having problems breathing after the long trek. Amanda didn't join us because she didn't want to make the quarry red.
Shivering, we left the quarry and trekked for 5 minutes to the next campsite. This one was a nice place. We pitched our tents (again) and changed out of our clothes in them. This time, the twine had to be attached to large pieces of rock because the ground was made of smaller rocks. It sounds horrible, but it's actually a LOT better than our previous campsite. They cooked a dinner of Maggie Mee (again) and this time, Arthi, Sam and I shared 2 packets. We thought they'd be more food after that, but there was no time. So each person only had an average of 2/3 packets of Maggie Mee. ._. Later at night, Nila Utama sat by the sea and started singing songs out of boredom. Other groups who had arrived later than us and were still busy cooking got quite pissed, but we didn't really care. Hoho.
This campsite had a home-y feeling about it as Nila Utama, Livingstone, Tenzing and Hillary were all together. Shackleton, Junko and Magellan were at another campsite further down. Those in charge of the former 4 groups were briefed by our instructors at night about the Sea Expedition the next day. Nyack.
After the briefing, we re-packed our bags for the next day and tried to account for all of our items. Sam's bag became the filled-with-16-ponchos bag. Heavy bag, that was. Since we were missing 3 bottles, a few of us walked around the 2 slightly separated campsites and asked other groups whether they had extra bottles. Wenlin and I managed to find 2 at Shackleton's campsite. Eh... then we went and pee-d at some place near the sea.
Since the land we were on was public property, we had to do sentry duty that night. The 4 of us entered our tent and spent quite awhile talking to teach other. Life stories, jokes and random people from NJC. (c: Arthi fell asleep 15 minutes before 00 30, the beginning of our sentry duty. We woke her up and spent the next 30 minutes with Chuyun, Grace and Lavania and the gates near the sea. The night sky was dotted with stars and aeroplanes heading towards Changi. 'Twas wasn't a bad night. (:
Thursday -
Day 4We woke up bright and early, went to pee, unpitched tents, and spent the morning packing everything up and bringing them down to the beach to be loaded. I had an unsatisfactory breakfast of a single packet of Frosted Cornflakes. ): Still, there wasn't much time, so everything was done in a rush. We put on sunblock and lip balm, got the kayaks ready and were one of the first few to row out. (x
You never know what it's like to KAYAK 15 km until you actually do it. It kills. Since Arthi and I were partners, neither of us could depend on the other to do all the rowing if we wanted anything more than a 10 second rest. Unlike those who were paired up with guys. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that everyone and anyone who pairs up with a guy can relax and do nothing at wish. Neither am I saying that these people would WANT to do so. I'm just saying that it's POSSIBLE to do so and that these people have the choice, unlike us, who don't have anything to choose from. Row, or row.
It came in 4 parts. We had to kayak from the HDB quarry area back to Camp 2, around 3/5 of Pulau Ubin. After the first 2 hours or so, I started to get really down and depressed because the sea was getting all choppy and I felt mildly sea sick. So Arthi had to encourage me and push me on. After say... 15-20 minutes, I was okay again. An hour later, we had lunch at Frog Island. :x After lunch, blur Arthi seemed to have forgotten how to row properly! :x I got kind of freaked out, but everything was fine in the end. Somehow, probably because we both had tired arms from rowing against the tide, we BOTH felt down. This was probably the worst period. We couldn't control our kayak properly and we weren't co-ordinating either. So we spent the next 20-30 minutes telling Lavania (a sea-expedition leader) that we wanted to change partners because the both of us weren't working out together. So it was Lavania that encouraged the both of us and insisted that we go on. In the end, I managed to get out of my reverie of "depression", which left Arthi in that state because she was feeling seasick-ish and giddy-ish. So I had to encourage her for the next bit and get us both co-ordinated. After awhile, both of us got high again. Towards the end, I started feeling extremely tired and seemed as if I was on the verge of giving up and started spewing rubbish. xD So Arthi had to encourage me again! Gosh. You could really see the effects of encouragement through our little kayaking expedition. It can really make others do what they don't really want to do at all.
The whole thing lasted for 7 hrs 15 min. Everyone was truly shagged by the time we were done. I applied SPF 80 sunblock and lip balm twice throughout, so I ended up with a really nice tan and no burn at all. (: Anyway, THE EXPEDITION STILL WASN'T OVER. We had to have all the kayaks and paddles back in their original places before it was truly over. When you are tired, a single kayak is extremely heavy, but we did it anyway. (c: *
woot* Now I can proudly tell the world that I have kayaked for 15 km. ;D If I had a choice, I'd rather run than kayak. After the first 20 minutes, we had only gone about 1 km. In 20 minutes, I can run at least 3 times that distance. ._.
Our last campsite was the area by the sea. We pitched our tents, then bathed and had dinner. Dinner was really really... weird. One big pot of Maggie Mee (9 packets) and everyone sitting around it, eating from the same pot. O_o Before dinner, Shujun and I did silly things like running and playing along the beach.
Me: Come, lets make foot-prints! (jumps hard onto a spot and leaves a mark)
Her: Okay! (jumps but doesn't use full weight)
Me: Jump harder lah!
Her: I'm not as heavy as you lah! (tries again)
Me: HARDER! Like this. (demonstrates)
Her: (jumps and digs heels in)
Me: Haiyoh! Not like that! If you do that then only the back part is proper.
Her: Then how?
Me: (jumps and moves body back and forth)
I have no idea how to describe how funny the situation was, but we were laughing throughout the whole thing. Then we decided to go to the jetty. I kept asking her to hurry up because I'm not a slow-walking person and she was like, "I'm running what! See?" *
jogs in slow motion* "I'm running whaaaaat!" When we got to the jetty, we lay down on our backs and propped our legs up onto the bar and talked about stuff from Nanyang. We even started singing When You Believe and played
Scissors-Paper-Stone with the split. ;D Everyone wants a piece of the wind from the jetty. xD We first shared the area with Chian Siang, Alvyn and Christopher. Then came Xiangyin and Grace.
Friday -
Day 5We slept by the sea, with the nice sea breeze and all. It was a great night. (: Then again, I woke up shivering even though I was the furthest away from the door. There was also the hum of the generator that kept going in the background. Heh.
As usual, we unpitched our tent (but for the last time), washed up and took our tent, fly sheet and ground sheet for washing. Basically, we spent the whole day washing items up and trying to get everything back into their original places. At first, we were a few items short, especially water bottles. We had the theory that someone from another group took more bottles than they brought back from the previous campsite, but we managed to get everything back and didn't have to pay any money whatsoever. Nothing was confirmed, but if it's true, I hope people learn to develop some integrity. The people in our group (especially Lavania) were really quite stressed out about it all.
Before going home, all of us sat down in a circle and had a last debrief with Bibiana. ): We had to tell each other our Highest Point, Lowest Point and Learning Point throughout the whole camp. Bibi's really proud of us even with the glitches, such as how we don't always turn up for activities or meet her on time. My highest point was at the quarry, after building the raft. My lowest point was obviously kayaking. My learning points were that encouragement is really important, especially when people are down because it pushes us and gets us to do things that we may not feel like doing but are actually beneficial to us and learning how to be more polite. ;D
I swear that my watch can seriously be the friendliest, most polite watch you could be in. Everyone says their "P"s and "Q"s, helps each other out or tries to, asks the welfare of others etc. You may think it's normal and all, but if you saw us/heard us, you would know what I mean. (: *
sigh* I'll really miss Bibiana and the rest of Outward Bound Singapore.
After taking our cellphones and wallets back, I switched the former on and started sending SMS-es to others. I ended up getting a headache, realising all the problems that I was going to have to face when I get back, especially with friends and classmates. 10 minutes later, I switched my phone off. And if you ask me now, I'd say yes, the cellphone IS a distraction. I think that if we had them during this camp, we wouldn't have bonded half as much. We would have spent the time SMS-ing our friends back in the mainland about how annoying some people are rather than learning how to deal with it and living with it.
Just randomly, I can see the tan lines on my thigh. The first one, and the one that's highest up, from my swim suit. The next one, from my FBTs with runner's cut. The third one, everything else that was left to toast in the sunshine during kayaking. (x I love my tan. ;D Oh yes, I found myself a piece of eyecandy. :D Heh. And, and, and I realised that my palms became really smooth (or at least smoother than before) after the many hours of kayaking. I heard Huiting from Livingstone talking about that as well. Hoho.
It's a pity that some people didn't get to come to OBS. It really truly, was an experience. (: Good luck to the people who are going in November. ;D Have fun, y'all!
This has been a long entry. Goodnight!
